Erza Scarlet: Debt Collector
by bellagill92
Summary: Jellal was not one to leave debts unpaid. If nothing else would convince him to do what she wanted to, then Erza had no choice but to pull the big guns and demand he settled the debt he had so tastelessly incurred one fine day under the sunset. It was only fair, after all. Jerza Week 2015 Day 2 – Sunset.


**A/N: Here is my submission for Day 2 of Jerza Week. Before you ask, no I don't have fics for every single day, but I am also working on something (pretty small and silly) for Day 3 (which will most likely be late as I have a job interview tomorrow!). Then, you should expect a break and then maybe something for Day 7 –** _ **maybe**_ **, since it's a bigger project and I'm not sure if I have the time to finish.**

 **This fic references The Rollercoaster. You don't need to read it but you might be a tiny bit confused. Also, in case you wonder, yes, this is the 'date' Erza asked Jellal in Quitter: A Tale of oh-so-Painful Addiction.**

It was a rather chaste affair, as far as dates went.

Then again, they had never really called it that in the first place – a date. They had simply made plans to go and see the rainbow cherry blossom fields together… on their own… and there might or might have been hand-holding involved (which had led to a lot of blushing and an almost obsessive attempts not to let their eyes meet while their hands remained together), but that was as far as they had gone in terms of public displays of affection.

In all, it wasn't the epitome of romance but it was comfortable, sweet and _them_. It certainly beat the avoidance act Jellal had been throwing until Erza had confronted him (among other things) in a drunken haze.

Despite the lack of a label, however, later they would remember that day extremely fondly as their first shared date… of course, the part that led to most of that fondness hadn't quite happened yet.

They started packing up the leftovers from the picnic they had shared (courtesy of Mira's cooking) as the sun begun to set. A chilly wind was starting to blow and they knew that if they stayed there much longer, they might just spend their second-date-but-not-quite-a-date bonding over shared colds and a box of paper tissues.

"Did we forget anything?" Jellal asked, looking around for any misplaced cutlery or something they might be about to leave behind.

"I don't think so," she said, tucking the last items into the picnic basket as she kneeled by it and moving it into her requip space for the ride back home. It would be a thirty-minute-walk at least and the basket was bound to weigh them down on the way. Getting up, she used her hands to brush a few rogue blades of grass from her knees before facing Jellal. "Are you sure you want to walk all the way back? We could just head to the train station and ride it to Magnolia." He hadn't been back on active duty that long and considering the long months he had spent going through physical therapy to recover from the muscle atrophy he had been awarded with after a few weeks in a coma, she wasn't quite sure how much physical strain he could take.

He shook his head, though, indicating there was no need for such concerns. "It would take us ten minutes to reach the train station and Magnolia would only be two stops away in any case. It's not worth the ticket. Besides, I could use the exercise."

She sighed. "Well, if you're sure…"

They walked along a path surrounded by cherry trees, first rainbow-colored ones and then the regular pink type as they got further down the road.

"Today was nice," Jellal admitted.

Erza looked up at him and smiled. "I told you it would be. The cherry blossoms around here are worth seeing at least once in a lifetime… though if you asked me, I'd say preferably more. The guild's viewing party shouldn't be too long from now – we can come again then."

He hadn't really been referring to the Cherry Blossoms, his enjoyment of the day mostly focused on the company he'd kept. Still… "I wouldn't mind that."

"Good… just don't think I will go easy on you when it's time for Bingo. I take pride in having been the victor of the yearly games for the past three years… or the past three years in which we held the party."

Jellal chuckled. "Don't worry. I won't hold it against you if you make this year a forth."

Just then, a particularly hard gust of wind reached them, freeing several loose petals from the trees and having them fly all around them almost on a whirlwind. It lasted for about a minute, during which hair flew in all directions including their eyes, to the point that they had to stop walking and just cover their faces with their arms. By the time it was over, their hair was a mess, especially Erza's due to its length. Jellal couldn't help but smile when he saw the state of her as it was so amusing. "Your hair is covered with petals," he informed her.

She frowned. "Where?" Tilting her head sideways, she ran her fingers through the strands in an attempt to both make it look at least a tad respectable again and to loosen the aforementioned petals. Jellal watched with wonder (something those long strands of red so often made him feel) as several of them fell down onto the floor before straightening again. "Are they all gone?" she asked, turning her head from left to right so that he could see further back.

"There are still a few at the back."

She groaned and reaches back, trying to get them out. "Where?"

"Well… everywhere, really," he told her. It was hard to name one place or direction in specific because there were still about half a dozen in all sorts of different places.

She huffed. "I will never be able to get them…" And then, her face started to color. "C… could you…?"

He blinked. Was she asking him to…?

"… get them out?" she finished, avoiding his eyes.

He nearly let out a choked sound from his throat. "I… I… if you… need me to." He was about to touch her hair. He was about to touch her hair. _He was about to touch her hair._ But no, wait – he couldn't be creepy about it! _Just get the petals out be done with it – don't perv around!_ A voice remarkably similar to Ultear's sounded in his head. "You… you should turn around." She did, glad to get a very good excuse not to look him in the face.

His hands trembled as he reached for the first petal. How long had it been since he had freely touched her hair? Since they were children, maybe? Sure, there had been vague brushes of a hand since then and the more unpleasant (rather threatening) touches back when they had clashed. But that kind of touching… no, he didn't recall it ever happening since their days at the tower.

He pulled every petal as quickly and with as little lingering as possible, but the strands still rubbed against his fingers as he dug for the petals that had buried themselves the deepest. Her hair was thinker than he remembered… lusher too. It made sense because back then malnourishment had been an issue and that was bound to have taken toll on her hair as well as her body. He counted seven petals he had picked up and then gently (and oh-so-pleasantly) moved her hair a little to see if he had missed any. Such wasn't the case. "I'm done," he told her.

"Thank you," she said almost breathlessly before turning around… and coming to realize just how closely they were standing together. Her face was still incredibly red and she wanted to look away, but having accidentally looked up, her eyes met his and she simply couldn't bring herself to look away. It was tortuous and yet…

They stayed like that, looking at each other silently for several moments. Jellal was just as bad as she was, his eyes fixed on her face and unable to move for some reason. He blamed the hair – all that touching had clearly broken his mind completely because he now found himself actively having to resist letting his eyes drop down from her own towards those red lips… but he failed. Of course he did – he was weak, _so_ weak. Her lower lip looked a little swollen as if she'd been biting it hard. It made him want to lean forward and kiss it better (as if he hadn't already wanted to do so even before knowing there was something that might call for such a gesture).

Should he do it? Should he not? They were on a date. Sort of. Unofficially, because even if they had acknowledged that their relationship was of the romantic sort, the unspoken agreement was that things between them wouldn't progress in a rush. As such, hand-holding was as far as they had gone (drunken kisses from Erza's part notwithstanding). So, he couldn't do it, could he? At the pace they were going, they just hadn't gotten _there_ yet. He couldn't go ahead with it and make things awkward. He just couldn't. As such, he finally willed himself to tear his eyes away and started to turn…

… until she grabbed his wrist before he could.

"Don't," she said, barely in a whisper.

He turned around and found her looking down, the few glimpses he could get of the skin of her face matching the color of her hair so closely that is was near-impossible to tell them apart.

"Don't what?" he had to ask, his voice shaking a little.

"Don't brush it off," she whispered.

He blinked. Did she mean the…? "Don't brush what off?"

She was practically blowing steam at that point. " _You know what_!" she shouted, her eyes still on the floor. She sounded absolutely mortified. "You… you were considering doing something a moment ago. S-so… don't brush that moment off… I don't want you to."

She did mean _that_ – the almost-kiss.

"Erza… I thought we agreed that we should go slowly with… this…"

"I'm not asking for a marriage proposal!" she snapped before she could think. When she _did_ think, however, her mortification only increased.

He blinked. "I see…"

"If… if it's any consolation you… you…" She paused, unable to finish it. Oh god, what was she doing? Maybe she should have just allowed him to let it go.

"I what?"

"You…" She gulped. Oh, what the hell – life only happened once "… _you owe me!"_

He was silent for a moment. "I… oweyou?"

"Yes, you d-do, as matter of f-fact," she said extremely quickly, stumbling through words. "After all, last time we had a m-moment like this in the sunset, you put an end to it by using reasons that we have already established were not valid. So, you _owe_ me." She sounded more and more confident about her logic with every word – by the end of it, she was actually looking him in the eye with a determined look on her face (although the blush remained).

It took him a second to realize what she meant exactly: their first almost-kiss on that beach right before the Grand Magic Games. And by 'reasons they had already established that were not valid' she obviously meant his so-called epic fail of an excuse – the fake fiancée. God, how he regretted that.

"So, what you say I owe you is a k…"

" _Yes!"_ she interrupted him quickly before he could finish. Again, she looked away from him. "If… if nothing else will convince you, then take it as settling this debt. I must _insist_ that you do not waste this perfect opportunity."

He hesitated for a moment. "Are you s…?"

"Just kiss me now before the sun goes away!" And it was incredible how she said that while looking like she was about to faint.

With such a degree of urging, he had no choice but to obey. His hand trembled as he reached to place it on her cheek, feeling the heat of it under his fingers, and his lips were soft as they descended onto hers.

The kiss was gentle and sweet – nothing like the one they had shared (or rather, that Erza had planted on him) while she was drunk out of her mind that night in his room at the guild. Their lips were awkward at first, testing each other before finally settling into a more comfortable rhythm. Lips parting, a hand wondering into her hair, two arms wrapping themselves around his neck, bring him down to put more pressure on the kiss…

It was heaven under the sunset. And hellfire burning within them.

The kiss didn't last very long – they were just getting started, after all – but it was more satisfying than words could describe. Afterwards, they stood there with their foreheads pressed together, Erza's arms having descended to secure him by the waist.

"There… debt settled," she whispered.

He sighed, tilting his head back, the touch of their foreheads ceasing. "I didn't really do this because of the debt, you know?"

She smiled. "Good," the redhead said. "Because neither did I." She removed her arms from around him and, after the kiss, she felt bold enough to take his hand and rest her head against his shoulder as they resumed walking, the sun setting on the background.

"So, when do you want to do this again?" Jellal asked. Then, he blushed. "A date – I mean a date!"

She chuckled at his embarrassment over the possibility that he might have been misunderstood. "Hmm… Petunia Village used to have a bakery and confectionery festival around this time of the year. Circumstances haven't let me attend it for the past eight years or so, but I would like to see if it still takes place and, in case it does, check if it hasn't lost quality over the years. If you would like to accompany me…"

He grinned – of course a festival based around sweets would be her first pick for a date. It wouldn't be Erza if it wasn't. "I wouldn't miss it for the world."

 **The End**


End file.
